Dear Dr. Helen:
I finished reading your post on “Should Men Marry” an hour ago and have only just recovered from the state of disorientation in which it left me. I am a 47-year old man who has never married even though I have for my entire adult life harbored fond notions of a life spent alongside a woman to whom I could devote myself body and soul. I have no doubt my own view resonates to the core with the bulk of responses other men have put to you.
Your reader who stated “…7 out of 10 guys I talk to tell me that [marriage] is one of the worst mistakes that they every made” could have been me. You can well imagine how many married couples a 47-year old man or woman could know in their life. Yet in my case, I would put the “regret factor” at about 90% or higher. Of all considerations that have induced me to sidestep the full commitment of marriage-and two women in my life have made me dwell on the thought to the point of distraction-none carried more power than the number of married men who confided to me that their lives went into a progressive tailspin once the ring went on the finger. And no, they are not the golf addicts, football junkies or other little boys who never grew up.
I fully acknowledge that there are women out there that are spectacular in every way, whose character, intellect and capacity for virtue and compassion are the stuff of legend. If you can get her name, please forward it to me. The preponderance of women I meet daily make a point of trying to be men, and ill-bred men at that. If you are familiar with Sir Compton MacKenzie’s statement that “Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men; but they often find it extremely difficult to behave like gentlemen,” you will know what I mean. If I blame the rise of feminism on the historic mistreatment and mis-regard of women, I blame the revolting, self-centered, egotistical and utterly man-hating disposition of most American women on the soulless creatures who have taken feminism to perverted extremes and become intoxicated on it. Women constantly whine about “the male ego.” When is the last time these women took a good look at the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine or spent five minutes watching The View? These women do not lack a massive ego, they only lack testicles and a beard.
Don’t think I desire some kind of doormat submissive, either; if I need my slippers fetched, I’ll get a cocker spaniel, thank you, not a wife. I think, deep down, all decent men wish to be knights in shining armor, but you need a Lady in your life to be a knight. Women today are taught that being a lady is to throw your birthright away.
On the matter of the anti-male legal system I will offer only this: contemporary society does not raise men to be fighters. It raises women to be fighters, and it raises men to endure. “Real men do not complain, nor do they whine about attacks made upon them; it’s not manly,” society seems to say. If the proportion of ill-bred, vile men in this world have made it necessary for certain laws to be enacted, the public discourse of manhood has consumed all men collectively and spat them into the same pool of the bully, the wife-beater and the chauvinist pig. To be a man today is to be presumed guilty until proven innocent. I may as well change my name to Alan Alda to spare myself the trouble. Michael Crichton noted in his novel Disclosure that a man cannot even smile at a child in an elevator without being instantly thought a pedophile freak. Okay, that was a novel. But I have experienced the very same thing in my life many times. I’m a man, and therefore I am suspect. Men are not allowed to be human beings. Today, men have to take sensitivity courses when they get a job just to make sure they don’t offend their female coworkers. You should have met some of my female co-workers! Prison guards have more class.
And women wonder why men tremble at the altar.
Finally, the very same women I know who nag their husbands and boast to their girlfriends how they have their boyfriends wrapped around their fingers are the very same women who pant and blush while hearing Sean Connery’s voice, or watching Russell Crowe play Master and Commander. Maybe my mistake has been that when I listen to women, I have taken them seriously. Maybe 90% of what comes out of a woman’s mouth truly is irresponsible tripe. Maybe I really should just devote my efforts to being a gentleman as best I can, but when she starts testing my nerve, throw her across my lap and smack her backside until it glows like Rudolph’s nose.
On second thought, I’d rather not spend the next eight months in prison. Maybe I’ll just forget the whole romance thing and enjoy a good afternoon fly fishing. It sure seems a lot safer.
Sincerely,
One more man
